People call it the dark side. They're wrong.
It gets just as much sunlight as the side we see from Earth, but since it faces away from us, we’ve wrapped it in mystery and Pink Floyd lyrics. It's actually the far side of the moon, and honestly, it is a much weirder, more rugged place than the familiar "Man in the Moon" face we stare at every night. While the near side is covered in smooth, dark volcanic plains called maria, the back side is a battered mess of craters and highlands. It looks like a completely different celestial body.
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For decades, we knew nothing about it. It wasn't until 1959 that the Soviet Luna 3 probe swung around and snapped the first grainy, grainy photos. Those images changed everything for planetary scientists because they revealed a massive asymmetry that we still don't fully understand. Why does one side have all the "seas" and the other side have nothing but scars?
The Big Myth: Why It Isn't Actually Dark
The moon is tidally locked to Earth. That basically means it takes the same amount of time to rotate on its axis as it does to orbit our planet. Because of this gravitational tug-of-war, we only ever see one face. But as the moon orbits Earth, the sun hits different parts of it. When we see a New Moon from Earth, the far side of the moon is actually in full, blinding daylight.
Imagine you're standing in the middle of a room (Earth) and a friend is walking in a circle around you, always keeping their face pointed toward you. They are still rotating—otherwise, you'd see the back of their head eventually. The "darkness" is a matter of perspective, not physics.
The Radio Silence Factor
The most interesting thing about being back there isn't the light; it's the quiet. The entire bulk of the moon acts as a massive shield, blocking out all the "noise" from Earth. Our planet is incredibly loud in the radio spectrum—TV signals, cell towers, radar, it's all buzzing. On the far side, that's all gone. It is the most "radio-quiet" spot in our local solar system. This makes it the holy grail for astronomers who want to build a radio telescope to look back at the very beginning of the universe, the "Dark Ages" before the first stars even ignited.
What China's Chang’e 4 Taught Us
In 2019, China did something no one else had: they landed a rover called Yutu-2 on the far side of the moon. Specifically, they plopped it down in the Von Kármán crater within the South Pole-Aitken Basin. This basin is one of the largest, deepest, and oldest impact structures in the solar system.
Landing there was a nightmare because you can't communicate with Earth directly. If you're on the back, the moon blocks your signal. To fix this, China had to park a relay satellite called Queqiao in a specific orbit—the L2 Lagrange point—so it could "see" both the rover and the Earth at the same time.
Yutu-2 discovered that the regolith (moon dirt) on the far side is much thicker than on the near side. It also found strange "gel-like" substances that turned out to be impact melt—basically glass created when a meteorite hits the surface so hard it melts the rock instantly. The data suggests the crust on the far side is significantly thicker, maybe because of how the moon cooled billions of years ago, or perhaps because a second, smaller "companion moon" once crashed into it and splattered across the surface like a slow-motion pancake.
The Mystery of the Missing Maria
Look at the moon tonight. You’ll see those dark patches. Early astronomers thought they were oceans, so they called them "maria" (Latin for seas). We know now they are basaltic plains from ancient volcanic eruptions.
But on the far side of the moon, these plains are almost non-existent. It’s nearly all bright, rugged highlands.
- The Insulation Theory: Some scientists, like Arpita Roy and the team at Penn State, suggest that when the moon was forming, the Earth was a molten ball of fire. Since the moon was much closer then, the near side was kept hot by Earth's radiation, while the far side cooled down much faster.
- The Crustal Thickness: Because the far side cooled faster, its crust grew thick and tough. When meteors hit it, they couldn't punch through to the molten magma underneath. On the near side, the crust was thinner, so impacts cracked the surface and let the "lava" bleed out, filling the craters and creating the dark spots we see today.
It's a stark contrast. The near side is the "pretty" side. The far side is the "armor" side, having taken the brunt of space debris for eons.
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Why We Are Going Back (For Real This Time)
NASA’s Artemis program isn't just about sticking flags in the dirt again. We are looking at the far side of the moon as a permanent base of operations. The South Pole is especially juicy because of "permanently shadowed regions" (PSRs).
Since the sun hits the moon at a very low angle at the poles, some deep craters haven't seen sunlight in billions of years. They are colder than the surface of Pluto. We've found evidence of water ice in these craters. Water means oxygen. Water means hydrogen for rocket fuel. If we can mine that ice, the far side becomes a "gas station" for missions to Mars.
It’s also about the geology. Samples from the South Pole-Aitken basin could tell us exactly when the moon formed. Currently, our "Giant Impact Hypothesis"—the idea that a Mars-sized planet named Theia hit Earth and kicked out the debris that became the moon—is our best guess. But we need rocks from the deep, old far side to prove it.
The Logistics of Living in the Shadow
If you were a colonist on the far side, your life would be dictated by the 14-day night. You get 14 days of sunlight, followed by 14 days of absolute darkness and temperatures dropping to -280 degrees Fahrenheit. You can't just use solar panels. You’d need nuclear batteries (RTGs) or massive "heat banks" to survive the lunar night.
Then there's the psychological aspect. On the near side, Earth is always hanging in the sky—a big, blue, comforting marble. On the far side of the moon, Earth is never visible. You are truly alone in the cosmos. For some, that’s terrifying. For astronomers, it’s the ultimate silence needed to hear the whispers of the Big Bang.
The Next Steps for Moon Observers
If you want to understand the far side better, you don't need a telescope (because you can't see it anyway), but you should track the lunar phases differently.
- Download a Lunar Map: Look at NASA’s LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) data. It has stitched together thousands of high-res photos into a 3D globe you can spin.
- Follow the Chang’e Missions: China is currently the leader in far-side exploration. Their upcoming missions (Chang’e 6, 7, and 8) are specifically targeting sample returns from the far side.
- Watch the "Libration": Because the moon wobbles slightly in its orbit (a process called libration), we can actually see about 59% of the lunar surface over time, not just 50%. With a good pair of binoculars during certain times of the month, you can peek just a tiny bit around the "edge" into the far side territory.
The far side of the moon is no longer a blank map. It’s a laboratory. It's a shield. And very soon, it might be the jumping-off point for the rest of the human race to leave the cradle of Earth. We’ve spent thousands of years wondering what was behind the curtain. Now, we’re finally pulling it back.
Actionable Insights for Space Enthusiasts
To stay ahead of the next decade of lunar discovery, focus your attention on the Lunar Gateway. This is an upcoming small space station that will orbit the moon, providing a staging point for far-side landings. Keep an eye on the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), a joint project between China and Russia that aims to compete with NASA’s Artemis. The geopolitical race for the "quiet side" of the moon is just beginning, and the resources found in that ancient, battered crust will likely dictate the next century of space travel.
Check the NASA Artemis updates monthly, as flight paths for upcoming missions often involve "slingshot" maneuvers around the far side that provide new, high-detail telemetry data. If you’re a ham radio enthusiast or a tech hobbyist, look into the "Moon-bounce" (EME) community, which uses the moon as a reflector, though you'll quickly learn why the far side remains the ultimate dead zone for terrestrial noise.